Bangladeshi Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus wants a “graceful exit”, as he launches a legal challenge to his sacking from the Grameen Bank, BBC online reports Thursday.
Prof Yunus said he was happy to step down but he wanted to secure the future of the microfinance bank he founded.
On Wednesday, the central bank sacked him, saying he was past retirement age and had been improperly appointed. The effort to remove Prof Yunus is the culmination of a long-running feud with the government.
On Thursday, he lodged a case challenging his dismissal in Bangladesh’s High Court but he made it clear that he is happy to leave his post as managing director as long as there is a stable handover to his successor.
The court is set to rule on the dismissal on Sunday.
Prof Yunus fell out with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2007. He angered her by trying to set up a new party while she was under house arrest on the orders of the military government.
Prof Yunus argues that he has special dispensation to stay in charge of the Grameen Bank – which he heads after establishing it in 1983 – beyond retirement age (60). He is 70.
The latest developments come after he has had to defend himself against increased efforts by the government to force him out as well as allegations in a co-produced Danish-Norwegian TV documentary that aid money was wrongly transferred from one part of Grameen to another in the mid-1990s.
While his supporters say that he helped lift nine million mostly female borrowers out of poverty, critics argue that the microfinance concept worldwide has been discredited.
